Last week, I came back from a holiday in South Africa, which was a really interesting break from London life. So the next couple of posts are going to be about a few things I noticed while I was out there.

But this post is about why I didn’t write them while I was there.

Being a real nerd when it comes to toys and technology, when I travel overseas (actually, when I’m away overnight) I carry around a considerable amount of technology with me. My laptop is something I tend to take with me whenever I’m going to be out of the flat for more than 24 hours. But while I could use it to make notes and connect to the internet with, I’ve also got an iPod Touch (which is essentially an iPhone but without the telephone- thinner, but with wireless internet connectivity), which I now use on almost a daily basis at work and at home to check emails, websites and so on, as it’s usually much quicker and easier— and far more portable— as well as to use as a music and video player to keep myself entertained with.

As a result, the laptop is increasingly becoming little more than a portable hard drive and screen for saving and showing off the photos from the digital SLR, which is also one of the regular things I carry around whenever there’s the slightest chance of getting a photo opportunity (along with a small collection of lenses, filters and other bits and pieces. As they say, I’ve got “all the gear, but no idea.”)

However, something went wrong with my iPod while I was out there- it suddenly would do nothing other than show a plain white screen- which not only meant that I couldn’t use it to check my emails or what was happening in the world through online news sources, but it also meant that I was cut off from the carefully selected highlights of my music collection I’d brought with me, the handful of videos I’d put on it to entertain myself, my collection of photos, and the notes I’d been making about things I wanted to either write about, or to research into further when I had the time. Very frustrating…

As I was waiting for the purchase of a flat to go through, I was happy to use my laptop to check my emails and make sure that there was nothing important going on that I needed to know about.

But when we moved on to our second port of call in the South African wine regions, things changed slightly. For one thing, the second one of the places we were staying in was quite remote; hidden away behind some vineyards in the Western Cape, where the only other internet connections available to me involved my UK mobile phone (which in the past has resulted in some pretty shocking bills when using it overseas, so I don’t use it out of principle overseas) and the PC in the owners’ office, and I don’t really feel comfortable using other people’s computers.

The other thing was that I started asking myself questions about my online behaviour, and it occurred to me that the last time that I was “offline” for more than 3 or 4 days was at least 3 or 4 years ago, and possibly as many as 9 years ago.

The thing is, I use the internet a lot. I use it to read the news, I listen to music through Last.fm, and there’s about a dozen websites that I visit at least 2-3 times a week. I use it to organise my thoughts through blog posts I write, and I use it to send myself notes and reminders— emails that I pick up on my PDA with directions to where I’m meeting someone later that day, for example. In my spare time I play computer games, and most of them involve the internet in some way. When I’m not online, I’ve got videos and podcasts that I’ve downloaded that I watch and listen to. At work, if I’m not looking for information on the internet, I’m looking for information about it.

So I decided to go without for the rest of the holiday. No visits to cyberspace for a week- I would restrict myself to living in meatspace. That strange parallel dimension where nothing is cyber, meta, inter, e-2.0 or virtual. Where everything you see is offline, “user generated content” and happening in real time, and everyone’s Avatar, their personalised representation or embodiment in this world is a careful arrangement of meat.

In fact, I have to confess that I did actually use the internet once in my “offline week” (after remembering in the middle of a bout of insomnia on a hot night that I had a note on my iPod to remind myself about a website I’m responsible for updating), but I made an effort— which turned out to be a surprisingly strong effort— to not check up on my emails, Facebook etc. or anything other than the job in hand “just while I was there.”

So how was it? Well, I have to say that it wasn’t something that I really missed. I had my mobile phone, so if my old flat burnt down, or my new flat’s sale fell through, people could contact me. (Including the O2, who decided that while I was in South Africa and paying them a premium to receive calls would be a good time to get their call centre to call me every day to try to sell me their new broadband package…) It meant that I had a huge stack of personal email to clear out, as well as an overflowing inbox at work. But I think the best analogy is that it’s like giving up drinking— not really a problem when you’re out and about, doing things that you don’t usually do— just so long as you don’t find yourself sitting in a pub with people and watching them getting slowly louder and more obnoxious, and wishing that you were killing some brain cells, dulling your senses and getting louder and more obnoxious with them.

So needless to say, I was straight back at the computer the moment I got home. But as soon as I realised that I was going to spend the next half hour deleting spam and reading out of date news and blog posts, I switched off and went back to spending some time with my lovely wife. Maybe I’ll be able to learn a lesson from the exercise and make some more time for her in the future.

I hope so.

(PS- I’m pleased to report that my iPod Touch was replaced without too much fuss by Apple- just the fuss of arranging an appointment at the “Genius Bar” with a booking system that asks for your email address and mobile phone, but doesn’t offer you any sort of confirmation or reminder. Sadly, all the notes and email drafts were lost though. :o( But the purchase of the flat went through OK, and we are now the proud owners of a first floor Victorian conversion in north east London.)

March 5th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No comments